


Winter's Cold

by Dawnwind



Category: Alias Smith and Jones
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-19
Updated: 2012-12-19
Packaged: 2017-11-21 13:21:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/598225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dawnwind/pseuds/Dawnwind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Missing Scene for Night of the Red Dog</p>
            </blockquote>





	Winter's Cold

Hannibal Heyes was not a man who indulged in useless speculation. He stuck to facts, specifics that could be proven and replicated. He had never thought much beyond the next train job, or even the next year—that lead to uncertainty. Life had always been lived in the present—he and the gang would plan a heist, pull it off, spend the money and then move on. That was what worked. Life had been simple and straightforward.

Until Kid asked him what amnesty meant. Sure that amnesty couldn't possibly apply to the likes of them, two robbers with $20,000 bounty on their heads, Heyes hadn't given it a great deal of thought.

Until he realized that what amnesty meant, ultimately, was a future.

Which, in a roundabout way, was how he came to be in a cabin perched on the side of a snowbound mountain, wondering what his life would be like if Kid Curry died. Because without the Kid, that future wasn't worth a wooden nickel.

A sense of desolation settled around him, colder than the temperature in the chilly room. Heyes exhaled, his breath a white cloud that hung in the air before disappearing. The storeroom was supposed to be the warmer of the two rooms in the cabin, because the provisions piled along the walls created a layer of insulation. At least that had been his rationale for turning a couple of fifty pound sacks of flour into a sick bed for the Kid. But this far from the fireplace, and without the body warmth of five other men in one small space, it was still appallingly cold in the middle of the night. 

He shivered, pulled his jacket tighter and tentatively placed one hand on Curry's feverish forehead, perversely mollified that at least the Kid was warmer than he was. What was it that Grandpa Curry used to say? Feed a fever and starve a cold? Or was it feed a cold and starve a fever?

Whichever, Kid hadn't eaten in over a day, and that was so unlike him that Heyes was amazed that he hadn't noticed how sick Curry was earlier. Breakfast had been the usual—oatmeal the consistency of brick mortar, without a drop of milk, and only a dribble of honey for sweetening. Thinking back, Heyes could picture the Kid hunched over his chipped bowl, coughing and staring dully into the cooked oats. At the time, Heyes had assumed that, like the rest of them crammed together in the cabin for the winter, Kid was just dreaming of a hearty meal of eggs, ham and warm biscuits with gravy instead of the slop Clarence served. 

When Kid collapsed during the never-ending poker game, Heyes' initial emotion had been fear, pure and simple. Curry was rarely sick, and even recovered from the usual bumps and bruises of a life on the run uncommonly quickly. 

Billy Boggs had, in his dunderheaded way, managed to voice Heyes' deepest fear. "Sure hope he ain't gonna die…ground froze like it is, be a chore to bury him," he'd said, bringing a lantern, a basin of water and some old flour sack rags into the improvised sick room.

Pierced through the heart but determined not to show it, Heyes had dipped a rag in the water to cool Kid's head, using sarcasm to keep from falling apart. "What we could do is let him freeze solid and then stand him in the corner till spring."

Gaping in shock, Billy had been outraged. "Golly, Josh, I thought he was your friend."

Coming up behind them, Ralph had apparently felt that any discussion of death should include an undertaker. "A body keeps quite nicely in this weather, no smell of any kind…"

"This is my patient, and his possible demise is my area of expertise," Chauncey Beauregard had announced in his pompous manner, shooing the other two men out. 

"Your expertise?" Ralph had bristled, stomping back to the table where Jason sat idly shuffling the cards.

"Doc, you had your say before." Heyes stood guard over Curry, determined not to let the charlatan near him again. "He ain't your concern anymore. I'll tend to Thaddeus until he gets better."

"Don't you mean 'if'?" Beauregard had said archly. 

In Heyes' opinion, Beauregard was an incompetent example of a doctor, and he didn't trust the man any farther than he could throw him—which wasn't very far. Despite that, his pessimistic diagnosis left Heyes even more afraid for the Kid. 

Heartsick and scared, he had been surprised to see a measure of compassion in Clarence Boles' eyes before the door was closed.

Oddly, he had never before contemplated his partner's demise. Not seriously. He'd feared for Kid's sanity a few times in the past—maybe more than a few times. And he'd watched nervously when Kid drew his gun against another man, but the Kid always came out the victor. 

So how in the hell had one lousy bout of the grippe, or whatever it was Kid had, brought them both this low? Was there some way to jump off of this train before it brought them to the eventual destination, or were they both destined to be tossed out to the fates? Heyes ran his hand down Kid's cheek to his throat, pressing gently against the proof of life there. That palpable throb of the heart, keeping Kid alive. For how long? He'd now been unconscious for twelve hours. Heyes was no doctor, but he'd bandaged enough wounds and nursed enough sick gang members to know that it was important to make the patient drink something and then pee. Those two things, basic but vital, seemed to keep more patients alive than all the tonics and compounds recommended by the snake oil salesmen in the street.

Kid hadn't eaten more than a mouthful of breakfast. He hadn't drunk any coffee, not that Heyes had noticed, anyway, and he hadn't taken a piss all day.

Heyes was unaccustomed to such a stark feeling of overwhelming terror. If Kid died, he'd have no one. There was not one single person in the world whom he could depend on more than Kid Curry. Not one person he even cared to be with. If Kid was gone, he truly did not know what he would do.

In all the trains and banks they'd robbed, every time they'd been chased by posses, Kid had been there by his side, steadfast and true. Nothing could break them apart or change that fact. 

The Devil's Hole Gang was the most successful gang in the west, and always got away with the money. The one or two exceptions to that rule didn't count no how. Wasn't one posse that had ever bested Heyes and Curry—that Lobo and Riggs once got surrounded and jailed didn't count because Heyes and the Kid hadn't been with them. Even when Kid was shot in the shoulder just over a year ago, he had recovered so completely Heyes couldn't even see the scar whenever Kid took his shirt off before a bath.

This damned cold, grippe, or God forbid, pneumonia could steal Kid away from him more easily than he'd ever picked a three tumbler safe. Heyes had absolutely no way to battle this foe, and that left him frightened in the dark, speculating a bleak future.

He wasn't about to be abandoned with that roomful of bad poker players all out to rob the other of his share of the gold. If there was one thing Hannibal Heyes hated, it was a thief with no sense of honor. And whoever _had_ stolen the gold he and Curry had panned was lower than a snake in the grass. The only future he was interested in was one where he and the Kid got their money back and made it off this mountain of snow alive and well.

There was nothing left to do but what he had always done. Decide on a goal, outline a plan, get what he wanted, and then go play poker. In that order.

Which meant that he had to lower the Kid's fever, then get him drinking. Helping him to breathe easier without coughing would be good, too. 

Pissing came afterwards.

Feeling like he had a firm foundation under his feet again, Heyes almost smiled. "You're gonna get better, Kid," he said aloud to the unconscious man. "Are you listening? Because, come spring, I ain't about to walk out of here without you."

He was more than surprised when Kid moaned and coughed raggedly, shifting uncomfortably on his lumpy bed.

"Hey, hey!" Heyes perched on the edge of a box, smoothing out the blankets covering Curry. "Don't thrash around so, you'll pitch right off this pile and land on your head. Then where would we be?"

"Still s-sno…" Kid was hoarse, and a raw cough split his reply in half. "Snowed in…"

"Good to know the fever hasn't burned off your powers of deduction." Heyes blinked away the film of tears in his eyes. He wasn't usually so mightily affected by a smoky hearth, especially one in the next room, with a door closed between them. 

Curry wheezed in a painful sounding breath and coughed weakly again, but Heyes could see that he was struggling to open his eyes.

"Beauregard said you could have pneumonia," Heyes blurted, before he could rein in his own mouth. "Grandpa Curry…" _had died from the same thing_ was on the tip of his tongue, but he couldn't say the words out loud.

"I ain't dead, Hey…" He gasped for air and gave up before finishing, but it was obvious that the Kid was thinking the same thing.

"Yeah, well, you wouldn't know that right off by looking at you." Heyes lay the palm of his hand on Kid's forehead again and winced this time. He surely was hot. "You look awful."

"A bath 'n… de-decent food an'…" Kid hunched over, hacking miserably, his face bleached white in the dim light of the single lantern. A cough wracked his whole body and left him gasping for breath. "I'm…righ' as r-rain."

"Don't talk," Heyes ordered, pointing a stern finger. 

Kid ignored him completely, which was just typical. "What time…" He gulped air like a hooked fish. "Time 'z'it?"

Heyes didn't have to look at his pocket watch. He was far too used to tracking the course of the moon across the sky. The single window was half buried in snow, but he could see the sky from where he was sitting, and the moon had passed the midpoint at least an hour or two ago. "Coming on three in the morning, I expect." He tucked the blankets up a little more securely around his partner and stood. "Stay awake and I'll be back directly. You need broth, and something for that fever…"

"Heyes," Kid rasped, raising one hand as if to push off the coverings and get up. 

"You move one single inch and I'll whup you good, Jedediah," Heyes threatened.

Kid's blue eyes widened and he sank back down on the flour sack with a wary expression, trying to stifle a cough all the while.

More than a little surprised at what had come unbidden from his mouth, Heyes snuck into the main room, skirting the four men lying on the floor, each practically mummified in blankets to ward off the cold. Heyes crept over to where Clarence kept the cooking supplies and gathered what he needed. At the fireplace, he ladled out a small bowl of rabbit meat broth, and poured a cup of coffee for himself. 

Lying in the single bed, Clarence was the only man who stirred out of sleep. He smiled genially at Heyes, and lay back down with a yawn. 

Heyes nodded back at him, with a whispered, "thanks."

Where Doc Beauregard was practically useless, Clarence had actually been quite helpful, suggesting willow bark tea to reduce the fever, honey to sooth a cough and broth for building up strength. More to the point, the man had actually brought those up the mountain with him. Heyes was more and more impressed with the old man's savvy and survival ethic. The rest of them—himself included--had been damned fools, coming up the mountain that late in the September. He should have known better. Devil's Hole was about as bad in the fall—prone to early snowfall.

Kid's illness had only proved how vulnerable they all were. Luckily, Clarence kept a head on his shoulders.

With Kid completely unconscious, Heyes hadn't been able to dose him up with any of the remedies, for fear of pouring any liquids down his lungs. But now that he was awake, Heyes was prepared to do battle against the disease and wrest his partner away from the invisible foe.

Placing the bowl and cup of coffee near the storeroom door, he put a pan of water on the hob to boil, and found the crock of honey and a bent spoon. Kid had never liked bitter willow bark tea in the past, but the honey might make it more palatable for him. And help his throat, in the bargain.

He took a gulp of hot coffee to keep himself awake before entering the sickroom again. 

Kid lay with his eyes closed, his breathing harsh and labored. "Got the…switch all ready?" he croaked.

Heyes frowned, still unsettled by his odd threat. "I ain't summoning your pa from beyond the grave, if that's what you were thinking."

Kid slitted open both eyes, blinking. "Sure sounded liked it," he said with the beginnings of a smile. "You got the…" He coughed into his fist. "M-manner of him just so."

Heyes set down the bowl of cooling broth with a thump that sloshed soup onto his hand. "Weren't my intention," he answered, the image of Patrick Curry standing sternly by the woodshed with a freshly cut branch in one hand coming on strong. Kid had not been the only one on the receiving end of that switch. Patrick Curry had believed in equal opportunity discipline—he employed the rod on all of his eight sons, Hannibal, and even one or two of Jed's sisters on occasion. "I've got to fetch two more things. Stay there."

Kid nodded, the sound of his wheezing loud in the quiet room. Heyes kept the door open so that he could come back quickly with the honey, a cup of hot water and a twisted paper full of dried willow bark.

"I ain't hungry." Kid clamped his mouth shut, eyeing the provisions with a grimace. 

Heyes huffed a breath, releasing a frosty cloud, and stabbed an accusing finger at him. "That's just like you! Too pig-headed to even want to get better."

Kid coughed in response, his whole body shuddering from the force of it.

Muttering about ungrateful patients, Heyes spooned up some broth and held it under his partner's nose. Kid didn't budge an inch, both lips once again shut tightly.

"That's just fine with me!" Heyes dropped the spoon into the bowl, suddenly unaccountably angry. "What the hell if you die? Ain't no skin off my nose!" he whispered savagely, well aware that any loud voices would wake the others in the front room. "Stubborn and mulish, that's what you are." His own guilt rose up, stark and unforgiving. "I was a damned fool for bringing us up here…so's you could get sick."

"H-heyes," Kid wheezed.

Heyes paced around the limited floor space, nearly tripping over sacks of grain and tins of soda crackers. "The great Hannibal Heyes!" he spat his own name with vehemence, too worked up to pay any attention to Curry. "Planned nearly a dozen train robberies to the minute! Worked out the strategies for more'n ten bank heists, poring over the details for months, but do I give one blessed thought to going up the side of a damned mountain in mid-September?" Heyes stared out the window at the thick blanket of white on the ground. "Lured by the gleam of gold like some stupid greenhorn never been west of the Rockies in his whole life." He kicked a sack of sugar with enough force to split the seam. A stream of white granules trickled out onto his boot. Clarence was going to have his hide for wasting valuable supplies. 

Heyes tipped the sack up on end with the open seam on the top and scuffed the mess into the space between the floorboards. The chore bled most of the rage out of him and he sat down on the floor, exhausted. "What was I thinking? Nearly killed you." He brushed the remainder of the sugar off his boot, chilled by his morbid thoughts. "You die, and I'll be alone."

"Heyes," Kid said loudly, "you're surely the most exasperating…" That furious burst of words left him gasping for breath, his chest heaving. 

Heyes grabbed the cup of water and thrust it at Kid, all but pouring it straight down his throat and nearly drowning him in the process.

"Hot!" Kid sputtered, shoving him away. "Ain't s'pposed to dowse me with it!" He choked and hacked but took a somewhat easier breath in the end.

"I'm sorry!" Heyes set down the cup, all fumble fingers. "I grabbed the cup I was going to use for tea."

Kid inhaled cautiously, audibly wheezing. "Helped though. But…" He cleared his throat. "What the hell are you…going on about?" He muffled a cough and continued. "Seems to me I recall being just as eager to find that gold as you were."

Heyes started to give a rebuttal but there was no evidence to support his claim, even he could see that. He settled on an overturned box, feeling churlish. "Should have had the sense God gave a mule."

"I ain't wet behind the ears, Heyes," Kid said quietly, picking up the bowl and carefully taking a spoonful. His hand shook a little but he ate all of the broth and finished it off by draining Heyes' coffee cup.

"That'll keep you awake," Heyes said sardonically. 

"Bet it…" Kid looked exhausted. "Won't. Heyes, neither of us is a…" He flashed half a grin and ruined it by coughing again. "Kid any more."

Heyes nodded, a sense of gratitude rising up inside him. The Kid wasn't better by a long shot. Even in the dim lantern light, Heyes could see how fever bright his eyes were and the red flush across his cheeks. His breathing sounded like a freight train trundling over a trestle, but he was alive and most likely to remain that way.

"You ain't dragging me around like some orphan in short pants. I got a brain," Kid said, poking curiously at the honey pot. "And I coulda said no, if I'd a mind to." He paused to breathe in heavily, his shoulders rising and falling with more effort than usual. "Ain't nothin' either of us can do about me getting this ague and catarrh."

"You're not supposed to be the sensible one," Heyes said sternly.

"What's the honey for?" Kid asked, shivering enough that his teeth chattered.

"Clarence says it's good for the throat." Heyes held up the dried willow bark. "And something to help with that fever." He went back to the fireplace in the other room to get more hot water and dumped the bark into the cup to steep.

Sitting back down in the chilly room, Heyes reached up to feel Kid's forehead again. The skin burned against his palm. "You're hotter'n a July afternoon."

"Wish it was…" Kid hacked into his fist, eyes drifting down. "A July afternoon…I could take a siesta out under a tree." He coughed harder, gasping for breath afterward. 

Heyes pushed him gently back onto the improvised bed. "Just fix your mind on that big old oak down by the stream that ran behind your daddy's place. Where we used to camp out."

"Yeah," Kid said softly, still shivering but obviously trying not to. He clutched the blankets up under his chin, eyes closed. "Where we stayed that night the raiders…"

"Came through," Heyes finished, his belly clenching. _Damn!_ What in all of Christendom had made him bring that up? The earlier memories of Patrick Curry? "Wasn't the mood I was trying to conjure," he said lamely, stirring the tea with the honey spoon to mix it thoroughly.

"Pa and Ma," Kid said on an outward breath, sounding far younger than his thirty years. "My brothers and sisters…" He hitched a ragged breath. "Your sisters. Just us left alive because…"

"We spent the night outside to avoid getting whupped." Heyes rubbed his bottom lip, memories of that time overwhelming him. He felt like he was drowning, flashes of the smell, the fear, and the sight of the bodies as horrifying as if they had just happened instead of seventeen years before. August 1863, the end of his childhood. No wonder thoughts of Patrick had triggered this onslaught.

"You ever think…?" Kid asked after a long time.

Heyes had assumed he'd fallen asleep, the Kid wasn't even coughing any more.

"What if we'd just…" He wheezed in twice and gulped air. "Just gone down to the woodshed like we was s'pposed to…?"

"No!" Heyes said firmly, his heart trip hammering suddenly. What if Kid had died then, so many years ago? It didn't even bear thinking about. "Kid, you weren't even full grown, what were you, ten?"

"I was eleven."

"What do you think we could have done? Fought 'em off with a couple of rabbit rifles and a skinning knife between us?" He could picture the two of them, clear as day. He'd been thirteen years old, skinny as a rail, just starting to get his growth spurt, but by no means as tall as his father Edward. Little Jed looked like the kid everyone called him, round faced and grubby, but with an astonishing accurate aim. Even then, he almost never missed with a sling shot, ball or a gun.

With Kid's older brothers long gone to the war between the states, the two boys had more chores to do than either wanted. That morning, they'd given into the lure of a gorgeous summer day and ditched farm work in favor of fishing and smoking hand rolled cigarettes. Patrick Curry had roared his disapproval and ordered them to meet him behind the barn for some strict discipline. Not quite as harsh a task master, Heyes' own father had agreed with the punishment on principle.

Hannibal and Jed, unrepentant and rebellious, had 'run away,' although the distance wasn't more than a mile. When they heard Quantrill's men ride in, destroying everything in their path, the boys had hidden until the shooting and horrible screams coming from their homes had died off. 

The devastation had been absolute. 

Heyes shut his eyes, as if that could shut down the memories so easily. He swallowed tightly, realized he was clutching the cup of tea nearly hard enough to crack the china, and loosened his grip.

He had lost so many.

"But we survived." Heyes held the tea to his friend's mouth and the Kid drank deeply without comment. "Kid, it's the only way…to get on with life. Not forget all those people, but to put 'em to…peace. Remember better damned days than that one."

Pushing the cup away, Kid nodded and dabbed at the leftover moisture on his mustache with his thumb. "All of us t'gether, with Gran'pa Curry, eating chicken on a Sunday after church."

"Your ma's apple pie." Heyes could almost smell it cooling in an open window. "Building my pa's barn after it burned down that time, you remember? Your brothers got the walls up in a couple hours. I was just old enough to help nail the framing for the roof, and you and me climbed up into the rafters…"

"I fell out!" Kid said as if unearthing a forgotten treasure. He grimaced. "And broke my arm."

Heyes chuckled. "I forgot that part."

"You would." Kid snuggled under his pile of blankets, mouth open, caught between a yawn and a cough. 

Weariness settling on him like a sudden weight, Heyes thought he could finally get some rest himself. "Go to sleep, Kid." He felt Curry's forehead again. It was far too soon for the medicine to work, but he wanted the brief contact—proof of life. "Still hot, but you'll get better."

"Don't need to nurse me along, Hey…" Kid coughed, lightly thwacking Heyes' knee with lax fingers. "Heyes, I'm gonna sleep all day. Go play poker."

"It's not yet dawn. Even Clarence is still asleep," Heyes said, content and reassured for the first time since Kid went down _"just like he was pole-axed,"_ as Billy Boggs would say.

Kid's noisy breathing lulled Heyes into a doze. He'd be more comfortable in the other room, nearer to the banked fire, surrounded by the surprisingly warm and effective insulation of five other men, but he didn't want to move. Didn't want to abandon the person closest to his heart, who had remained with him through the good times and the terrible ones. 

Snowbound on the side of a mountain with Kid ailing was never going to be one of his fond memories, but on the other hand, the was no place on God's green earth he would rather be. Make that God's snowy earth.

Kid made it all worthwhile. He made life _fun_ , and if that wasn't worth its weight in gold, he didn't know what was.

The future was looking brighter now that he was sure the Kid would be around to share it with him. The spring thaw was bound to occur sooner or later, and with that escape. Whether they'd have any gold left—any money left period--depended a lot on his prowess at the poker table. And that was something Heyes _could_ take to the bank. He could wipe the table with the lot of them, with one hand tied behind his back and a pair of deuces in the other. 

Heyes stretched out, pillowing his head on a little sack of salt, and tucked his fingers into the sleeves of his jacket for warmth. Visions of a pint sized kid with a shock of golden hair trailing after a skinny, dark haired boy holding a fishing pole beckoned him into a dream. 

"Heyes," Kid said, voice heavy with sleep. "I gotta take a piss."

"Wondered when that was gonna happen." Heyes sighed, with a rueful laugh. "Kid, your timing is impeccable."

FIN


End file.
